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A Western View of Tradition 



Address delivered in Madison Hall, University of Virginia, February 

22, 1912, on the occasion of the celebration of the 

birthday of George Washington 

BY 

HON. FRANKLIN K. LANE 

hi 
of the Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington, *D. G 



.63 






A Western View of Tradition 5 



I was told by President Alderman that your exercises on this 
day were always simple and dignified. In this phrase was ex- 
pressed not only what was becoming in an institution of this 
character but what best befitted the celebration of the birthday 
of George Washington who lived a simple and dignified life. 
No one can justly say that he lacked in appreciation of the 
services that he rendered to his country, yet no one can believe 
that those services were rendered either that he might have 
power or that his vanity might be gratified. If we survey the 
role of those whom the world has by common agreement 
called great we will find few men worthy of such eulogy — per- 
haps none other — for I like to think of Washington in the 
happy phrase of the English historian who said, "He is the 
greatest of the world's good men and the best of the world's 
great men." 

Surely if there is a Valhalla to which have gone those "who 
fought, and ruled, and loved, and sailed, and made, our world," 
Washington is there. 

And ofttimes cometh our wise Lord God, 

Master of every trade, 
Who tells them tales of his daily toil, 

Of Edens newly made, 
And they rise to their feet as he passes by, 

Gentlemen unafraid. 

To these who are cleansed of base desire, 

Sorrow and lust and shame, 
Gods, for they knew the hearts of men, 

Men, for they stooped to fame, 

^Reprinted from the University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin for 
April, 1912. 

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Borne on that breath which men call death, 
My brother's spirit came. 

So cup to lip in fellowship 

They gave him welcome high, 
They made him place at the banquet board, 

The strong men ranged thereby, 
Who had done his work and kept his faith, 

And had no fear to die. 

Beyond the loom of the last lone star 

Through open darkness hurled, 
Farther than rebel comet dared 

Or hiving star-swarm swirled. 
Sits he with those that praise our God 

For that they served his world. 

It has not been an easy task for me to decide upon a theme 
for discussion today. I know that I can tell you little of Wash- 
ington that would be new, and the thought has come to me that 
perhaps 3^ou would be interested in what might be called a 
western view of American tradition, for I come from the other 
side of this continent where all of our traditions are as yet 
articles of transcontinental traffic, and you are here in the very 
heart of tradition, the sacred seat of our noblest memories. 

No doubt you sometimes think that we are reckless of the 
wisdom of our forebears ; while we at times have been heard 
to say that you live too securely in that passion for the past 
which makes men mellow but unmodern. 

When you see the West adopting or urging such measures 
as presidential primaries, the election of United States Senators 
by popular vote, the initiative, the referendum and the recall as 
means supplementary to representative government you shud- 
der, in your dignified way no doubt, at the audacity and irrever- 
ence of your crude countrymen. They must be in your eyes as 
far from grace as that American who visited one of the ancient 
temples of India. After a long journey through winding cor- 
ridors of marble, he was brought to a single flickering light set 
in a jewelled recess in the wall. "And what is this?" said the 
tourist. "That, sir," replied the guide, "is the sacred fire which 
was lighted 2,000 years ago and never has been out." "Never 
been out? What nonsense! Poof! Well, the blamed thing's 

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out now." This wild Westerner doubtless typifies those who 
without heed and in their hot-headed and fanatical worship of 
change would destroy the very light of our civilization. But let 
me remind you that all fanaticism is not radical. There is a 
fanaticism that is conservative, a reverence for things as they 
are that is no less destructive. Some years ago I visited a fish- 
ing village in Canada peopled by Scotchmen who had immi- 
grated in the early part of the nineteenth century. It was a 
place named Ingonish in Cape Breton, a rugged spot that looks 
directly upon the Atlantic at its crudest point. One day I fell 
into talk with a fisherman — a very model of a tawny-haired 
viking. He told me that from his fishing and his farming he 
made some $300 a year. "Why not come over into my country," 
I said, "where you may make that in a month?" There came 
over his face a look of humiliation as he replied, "No, I could 
not." "Why not?" I asked. "Because," said he, brushing his 
hand across his sea-burnt beard, "because I can neither read 
nor write." "And why," said I, "haven't you learned? There 
are schools here." "Yes, there are schools, but my father could 
not read or write, and I would have felt that I was putting a 
shame upon the old man if I had learned to do something he 
could not do." Splendid, wasn't it! He would not do what his 
father could not do. Fine ! Fine as the spirit of any man with 
a sentiment which holds him back from leading a full, rich life. 
Yet can you conceive a nation of such men — idolizing what has 
been, blind to the great vision of the future, fettered by the 
chains of the past, gripped and held fast in the hand of the 
dead, a nation of traditionalists, unable to meet the needs of a 
new day, serene, no doubt self-sufficient, but coming how far 
short of realizing that ideal of those who praise their God for 
that they serve his world ! 

I have given the two extremes ; now let us return to our point 
of departure, and the first question to be asked is, "What are 
the traditions of our people?" This nation is not as it was one 
hundred and thirty-odd years ago when we asserted the tradi- 
tional right of Anglo-Saxons to rebel against injustice. We 
have traveled centuries and centuries since then — measured in 
events, in achievements, in depth of insight into the secrets of 
nature, in breadth of view, in sweep of sympathy, and in the 

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rise of ennobling hope. Physically we are today nearer to 
China than we were then to Ohio. Socially, industrially, com- 
mercially the wide world is almost a unit. And these thirteen 
states have spread across a continent to which have been 
gathered the peoples of the earth. We are the "heirs of all 
the ages." Our inheritance of tradition is greater than that of 
any other people, for we trace back not alone to King John 
signing the Magna Charta in that little stone hut by the river 
side, but to Brutus standing beside the slain Caesar, to Charles 
Martel with his battle axe raised against the advancing horde of 
an old-world civilization, to Martin Luther declaring his square- 
jawed policy of religious liberty, to Columbus in the prow of his 
boat crying to his disheartened crew, "Sail on, sail on, and on!" 
Irishman, Greek, Slav and Sicilian — all the nations of the world 
have poured their hopes and their history into this great melting 
pot, and the product will be — in fact, is — a civilization that is 
new in the sense that it is the blend of many, and yet is as old 
as the Egyptians. 

Surely the real tradition of such a people is not any one way 
of doing a certain thing; certainly not any set and unalterable 
plan of procedure in affairs, nor even any fixed phrase ex- 
pressive of a general philosophy unless it comes from the uni- 
versal heart of this strange new people. Why are we here? 
What is our purpose? These questions will give you the tradi- 
tion of the American people, our supreme tradition — the one 
into which all others fall, and a part of which they are — the 
right of man to oppose injustice. There follow from this the 
right of man to govern himself, the right of property and to 
personal liberty, the right to freedom of speech, the right to make 
of himself all that nature will permit, the right to be one of 
many in creating a national life that will realize those hopes 
which singly could not be achieved. 

Is there any other tradition so sacred as this — so much a 
part of ourselves — this hatred of injustice? It carries in its 
bosom all the past that inspires our people. Their spirit of un- 
rest under wrong has lighted the way for the nations of the 
world. It is not seen alone in Kansas and in California, but 
in England, where a Liberal Ministry has made a beginning at 
the restoration of the land to the people; in Germany, where 

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the citizen is fighting his way up to power; in Portugal, where 
a university professor sits in the chair a king so lately occu- 
pied ; in Russia, emerging from the Middle Ages, with her 
groping Douma; in Persia, from which young Shuster was so 
recently driven for trying to give to a people a sense of na- 
tional self-respect; in India, where an Emperor moves a national 
capital to pacify submerged discontent; and even in far Cathay, 
the mystery land of Marco Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, indi- 
vidualistic China, men have been waging war for the philosophy 
incorporated in the first ten lines of our Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. 

Here is the effect of a tradition that is real, not a mere group 
of words or a well- fashioned bit of governmental machinery — 
real because it is ours; it has come out of our life; for the only 
real traditions a people have are those beliefs that have become 
a part of us, like the good manners of a gentleman. They are 
really our sympathies — sympathies born of experience. Sub- 
jectively they give standpoint; objectively they furnish back- 
ground — a rich, deep background like that of some master 
of light and shade, some Rembrandt, whose picture is one great 
glowing mystery of darkness save in a central spot of radiant 
light where stands a single figure or group who hold the eye 
and enchant the imagination. History may give to us the one 
bright face to look upon, but in the deep mystery of the back- 
ground the real story is told ; for therein, to those who can see, 
are the groping multitudes feeling their way blindly toward the 
light of self-expression. 

Now, this is a Western view of tradition; it is yours too; it 
was yours first; it was your gift to us. And is it impertinent to 
ask, when your sensibilities are shocked at some departure from 
the conventional in our Western law, that you search the tra- 
dition of your own history to know in what spirit and by what 
method the gods of the elder days met the wrongs they wished' 
to right ? It may be that we ask too many questions ; that we 
are unwilling to accept anything as settled; that we are curious, 
distrustful, and as relentlessly logical as a child. 

For what are we but creatures of the night 

Led forth by day, 
Who needs must falter, and with stammering steps 
Spell out our paths in syllables of pain? 

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There are no grown-ups in this new world of democracy. We 
are trying an experiment such as the world has never seen. 
Here we are, so many million people at work making a living 
as best we can; 90,000,000 people covering half a continent — 
rich, respected, feared. Is that all we are? Is that why we 
are? To be rich, respected, feared. Or have we some part to 
play in working out the problems of this world? Why should 
one man have so much and many so little? How may the 
many secure a larger share in the wealth which they create 
without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual 
capacity and imagination? It was inevitable that these questions 
should be asked when this republic was established. Man has 
been struggling to have the right to ask these questions for 
4,000 years; and now that he has the right to ask any questions 
surely we may not with reason expect him to be silent. It is no 
answer to make that men were not asking these questions a 
hundred years ago. So great has been our physical endow- 
ment that until the most recent years we have been indifferent 
as to the share which each received of the wealth produced. 
We could then accept cheerfully the coldest and most logical 
of economic theories. But now men are wondering as to the 
future. There may be much of envy and more of malice in 
current thought; but underneath it all there is the feeling that 
if a nation is to have a full life it must devise methods by which 
its citizens shall be insured against monopoly of opportunity. 
This is the meaning of many policies the full philosophy of 
which is not generally grasped — the regulation of railroads and 
other public service corporations, the conservation of natural 
resources, the leasing of public lands and waterpowers, the 
control of great combinations of wealth. How these movements 
will eventually express themselves none can foretell, but in the 
process there will be some who will dogmatically contend that 
^"Whatever is, is right," and others who will march under the 
.. red flag of revenge and expoliation. And in that day we must 
! look for men to meet the false cry of both sides — "gentlemen un- 
afraid" who will neither be the money-hired butlers of the rich 
\nor power-loving panderers to the poor. 

Assume the right of self-government and society becomes 
the scene of an heroic struggle for the realization of justice. 

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Take from the one strong man the right to rule and make others 
serve, the right to take all and hold all, the power to grant or 
to withhold, and you have set all men to asking, "What should 
I have, and what should my children have?" and with this 
come all the perils of innovation and the hazards of revolution. 

To meet such a situation the traditionalist who believes that 
the last word in politics or in economics was uttered a century 
ago is as far from the truth as he who holds that the temporary 
emotion of the public is the stone-carved word from Sinai. 

A railroad people are not to be controlled by ox-team theories, 
declaims the young enthusiast for change. An age that dares 
to tell of what the stars are made; that weighs the very suns 
in its balances; that mocks the birds in their flight through the 
air, and the fish in their dart through the sea; that transforms 
the falling stream into fire, light and music; that embalms upon 
a piece of plate the tenderest tones of the human voice; that 
treats disease with disease; that supplies a new ear with the 
same facility that it replaces a blown-out tire; that reaches into 
the very grave itself and starts again the silent heart — surely 
such an age may be allowed to think for itself somewhat upon 
questions of politics. 

Yet with all our searchings and our probings, who knows more 
of the human heart today than the old Psalmist? And what 
is the problem of government but one of human nature? What 
Burbank has as yet made grapes to grow on thorns or figs on 
thistles? The riddle of the universe is no nearer solution than 
it was when the sphinx first looked upon the Nile. The one 
constant and inconstant quantity with which man must deal is 
man. Human nature responds so far as we can see to the same 
magnetic pull and push that moved it in the days of Abraham 
and of Socrates. The foundation of government is man — 
changing, inert, impulsive, limited, sympathetic, selfish man. 
His institutions, whether social or political, must come out of 
his wants and out of his capacities. The problem of govern- 
ment, therefore, is not always what should be done but what 
can be done. We may not follow the supreme tradition of the 
race to create a newer, sweeter world unless we give heed to 
its complementary tradition that man's experience cautions 
him to make a new trail with care. He must curb courage with 

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common-sense. He may lay his first bricks upon the twentieth 
story, but not until he has made sure of the solidity of the 
frame below. The real tradition of our people permits the 
mason to place brick upon brick wherever he finds it most con- 
venient, safest and most economical; but he must not mistake 
thin air for structural steel. 

Let me illustrate the thought that I would leave with you by 
the description of one of our western railroads. Your train 
sweeps across the desert like some bold knight in a joust, and 
when about to recklessly drive into a sheer cliff it turns a grace- 
ful curve and follows up the wild meanderings of a stream until 
it reaches a ridge along which it finds its flinty way for many 
miles. At length you come face to face with a great gulf, a 
canyon — yawning, resounding and purple in its depths. Before 
you lies a path, zigzaging down the canyon's side to the very 
bottom, and away beyond another slighter trail climbs up upon 
the opposite side. Which is our way? Shall we follow the 
old trail? The answer comes as the train shoots out across a 
bridge and into a tunnel on the opposite side, coming out again 
upon the highlands and looking into the Valley of Heart's 
Desire where the wistful Rasselas might have lived. 

When you or I look upon that stretch of steel we wonder at 
the daring of its builders. Great men they were who boldly 
built that road — great in imagination, greater in their deeds — 
for they were men so great that they did not build upon a 
line that was without tradition. The route they followed was 
made by the buffalo and the elk ten thousand years ago. The 
bear and the deer followed it generation after generation, and 
after them came the trapper, and then the pioneer. It was al- 
ready a trail when the railroad engineer came with transit and 
chain seeking a path for the great black stallion of steel. 

Up beside the stream and along the ridge the track was laid. 
But there was no thought of following the old trail downward 
into the canyon. Then the spirit of the new age broke through 
tradition, the canyon was leaped and the mountain's heart 
pierced, that man might have a swifter and safer way to the 
Valley of Heart's Desire. 



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